ABSTRACT
Nobel Symposium 14 on “The Place of Value in a World of Facts” (1969) addressed the then current discussion of “world problems,” thought to constitute a crisis for ideals of modernization. Renowned intellectuals from the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities addressed aspects of the crisis, with a group of student radicals commenting. The initiative had originated with the Swedish Academy that awards literary Nobel Prizes, but the humanities were marginalized in this context as a technocratic approach came to dominate. The students, critical of technocratic solutions, nevertheless found little use for traditional humanistic thinking. They represented a group that soon, by adopting “critical theory,” would transform academic humanities.
